Man wakes up with car parked on his chest

In one instant, Rickey May thought a bomb had gone off outside his home. In the next, he realized a car had crashed through his home’s brick wall and landed on top of him in his bed.

“It was something pretty wild to wake up to,” May said on Monday from his hospital room at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.

Police say Devlon Chandler (34) and his wife were travelling through Pine Bluff early on Sunday after a trip to a casino when Chandler fell asleep at the wheel.
The car left the road, hit a telephone pole, ruptured a gas line and went airborne briefly before crashing through May’s wall.

May was awake when the car crashed into his room because he had answered a telephone call in bed just moments before.

As the 1996 Ford Taurus shot across the bed, it rolled May inside his mattress “like a burrito,” protecting him from the force of the accident, May said.

“The first thing I thought was I was dying,” he said.

Heat from the muffler burned May’s chest, and he said the car’s weight on his chest was the most frightening. He said he was afraid that when the pressure was released he would die.

“I just knew I was dead. I told God ‘sorry’ for everything I’d done, but I asked him to help,” said May.

Hospital spokesperson Jerri Jackson said May (42) was in fair condition on Monday, but may need to have his right-hand ring finger amputated.

The Chandlers also were taken to the hospital, but their injuries were not serious and they were treated and released.

Devlon Chandler was ticketed for failing to maintain control of a motor vehicle, driving on a suspended licence and not having proof of insurance, police said. â€‘Sapa-AP